You Haven’t Heard About These Mobile Gaming Trends

Chartboost recently published a very elaborate statists report about mobile game industry. We’ve squeezed out a few very good recommendations for game devs and added an overview of game marketing news. The result is the post below, jam-packed with trends and tips.

The most playing countries in 2015

If you don’t know where to begin the expansion of your new game, start from the list of the most playing countries.

Saudi Arabia does seem like an attractive country, having surged by 7 positions as compared to the previous year. Taking into consideration that this is one of the richest countries in the world, you may find some high-paying gamers there. After all, the income of the most popular freemium game is provided by only 1.5% of users, provided that the game has well-designed in-app purchases.

Popular game categories by countries

Chartboost has created this great chart reflecting how cultural differences impact the most popular game categories.

Game activity and days of the week

Chartboost researchers also counted which days of the week saw the longest sessions. Weekends enjoy the longest games sessions, starting to quickly increase around Thursday. These are the days to send push notifications triggering purchases. Tuesday has the shortest sessions. Obviously, this is not the best day of the week for the game launch.

The growth of CPIs

See CPIs for all countries on this page. With the growing competition and consequently increasing CPI (some predict that it will double or even triple by the end of the year), advertising doesn’t seem like a promising acquisition channel for mobile games. But 2015 brings along a few alternatives.

2015 Mobile Game Marketing Trends

To become visible, some studios suggest advertising games outside traditional app stores. That is when HTML 5 game versions come in handy. The idea is to advertise the lite version of the game within different mobile media: blogs, websites and suchlike. The user can try out the game inside the browser. After completing certain levels, they are suggested to download the full version on the App Store. The great thing about this channel is that a developer only pays for the installs from the App Store and not for the users that test out the HTML5 version.

Another alternative marketing platform for games is chat apps. A lot of messaging apps like Kakao Talk, Line and, recently, Viber have added games to increase user engagement and monetize the traffic. Some team up with major game developers, some, like Tango, are open to cooperation with small developers. Check out their $25 Million Global Games Fund project. Perhaps, this is your chance.

Hope these tips will give your marketing efforts and new game ideas some direction!

And, guys, if you haven’t yet signed up for our AppDK, just do it! It’s free and very promising. Yes, the landing page will tell you nothing. But there is so much on the way (cross-promo campaigns, real-time downloads statistics, push notifications). And you will be among the first to try it out! Every new sign-up inspires us to try harder.